Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Is the minister aware of claims that Australian workplace agreements are being forced on nurses as part of the next Australian health care agreements? Is the ACTU trying to recruit healthcare workers to a political campaign? What is the government’s response?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay for her question and I make the point that, while members opposite are trawling through the Kirribilli House trash cans, this government is getting on with the job of delivering better services to the people of Australia. Let me make this point: you cannot enjoy the benefits of economic reform without the reform. We do not have 3.8 per cent economic growth and 4.2 per cent unemployment by accident. We have those great results in part because of the workplace relations policies of the Howard government. I say to the little conclave opposite: by all means change back to the policies of the former government, but you cannot have those policies without also having those consequences, which were declining real wages and one million people unemployed.

We have heard today about the ACTU’s dirty tricks manual. On Radio National this morning the boss of the nurses union was asked: ‘Will your membership be recruited as part of that marginal seat campaigning?’ Jill Iliffe said, ‘I would imagine so.’ So not only do you have the midnight knock from Kevin Reynolds and Joe McDonald but now you have the politicisation of every hospital. In fact, the ACTU’s dirty tricks manual cited as a case study what was done at Nepean Hospital in the electorate of Lindsay, and the New South Wales Nurses Association spent $1.2 million trying to secure the re-election of the Iemma government. So if the ACTU has its way, every hospital will not be a care centre; it will be a centre for political activism. Patients will get indoctrination with their medication. Patients will be offered brainwashing with standard health care at the bedside. No wonder the elective surgery lists are blowing out so badly in New South Wales hospitals; it is because the nurses are all at ACTU indoctrination lessons.

Also on Radio National this morning, the leader of the nurses union was asked about claims that the government has some secret plan to force nurses onto AWAs. She was asked: ‘Has that spectre been raised as far as your union knows?’ Jill Iliffe said, ‘Yes, it has. And it has been mentioned, certainly by state premiers, that that has been mooted by the federal government.’ I have a question for Jill Iliffe, who I assume is a truthful person: which premier said it to her? Because no premier has been told that. I make three points. First of all, premiers should not lie about government policy. Second, union officials should not retell lies that have been told to them by premiers. And, third and most fundamentally, ACTU Labor should not try to politicise our hospitals and the nursing profession. Hospitals are too important to the people of this country to be contaminated by party political point-scoring. Nursing is an honourable profession and the nurses of Australia should not allow themselves to be duped in a grubby political campaign which is ultimately being orchestrated by the ACTU for the benefit of the pathetic puppet sitting in the seat opposite.